Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

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Tag: bailouts

Greece’s parliamentary elections could reshape Europe. In voting for the radical left the Greek people have reinvigorated home rule and democracy across the continent.

Greece has been in economic crisis seemingly for eternity. Even in the Euro the system could not generate the growth necessary to repay the debt: the economy was hamstrung by enervating work rules, corrupting political influences, profiteering economic cartels, and debilitating cultural norms.

The inevitable crisis hit in 2009. Athens couldn’t make debt payments or borrow at affordable rates. Nor could Greece devalue its currency to make its products more competitive. The European “Troika” (European Central Bank, European Commission, and International Monetary Fund) developed a painful rescue plan.

Syriza, meaning Coalition of the Radical Left, arose to challenge the two establishment parties. Headed by Alexis Tsipras, Syriza won 36.2 percent and 149 seats, two short of a majority, on Sunday.

Syriza offered dreamy unreality: free health care and electricity along with food subsidies, pension increases, salary hikes, and more public sector jobs. Billions in new revenue is to magically appear.

That’s the title of a new paper that Carl DeNigris and I just published in the Drake Law Review. Here’s the abstract:

Economic freedom is the best tool man has ever had in the perpetual struggle against poverty. It allows every individual to employ their faculties to a multitude of opportunities, and it has fueled the economic growth that has lifted millions out of poverty in the last century alone. Moreover, it provides a path for individuals and communities to free themselves from coercive government policies that serve political elites and discrete political classes at the expense of the politically weak. Because of their relative political weakness, the poor and lower middle class tend to suffer the most from these inescapable power disparities.

Yet economic freedom — and ultimately, economic growth — is not self-sustaining. This tool of prosperity requires sound principles that provide a framework for cooperation and voluntary exchanges in a free society. Principles equally applied to all and beyond the arbitrary discretion of government actors; principles that provide a degree of certainty and predictability in an otherwise uncertain world. That is, economic freedom requires the rule of law, not men.

In this article, we discuss the corrosive effects that unconstitutional actions have on the rule of law, economic growth and, in turn, on the ability of the poor to improve their economic misfortune. We focus on the institutional dangers and adverse incentives that unconstitutional policies tend to create. These dangers are not just abstract or theoretical; this article shows how specific unconstitutional actions adversely affect the lives of poor Americans. And while Part IV shows that even constitutional violations by local governments can have disastrous effects, our central theme is that the federal government’s disregard for the U.S. Constitution has led to policies that kill jobs, stymie economic growth, and ultimately exacerbate the problems of those living in poverty.

The case studies we use to illustrate our argument are Obamacare, bailouts/crony capitalism, the Sarbanes-Oxley/Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and housing policy. It’s truly stunning to see how the policies that the government pursues – unconstitutional ones at that – hurt the very people they’re designed to help. Read the whole thing.

You have to give Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner some credit for spin: today the Treasury announced “Further Steps to Expedite Wind Down of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” The only problem is that the steps announced largely put the taxpayer at greater risk in order to protect holders of Fannie and Freddie debt.

Essentially, the Treasury has amended its agreements with Fannie and Freddie so that the companies no longer have to pay a fixed dividend to the U.S. taxpayer, but instead “every dollar of profit” from the companies to the taxpayer. The problem is that the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE) have never had a year where their profits would have covered the dividend payments, so while we can debate if the taxpayer will recover anything from the GSEs, shifting to just collecting profits definitely means the taxpayer’s potential recoupment is lower.

The GSE’s regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) was at least a little more honest in its announcement of the changes, stating that, “as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shrink, the continued payment of a fixed dividend could have called into question the adequacy of the financial commitment contained in the PSPAs.” Read “financial commitment” to mean protecting debtholders from loss.

How does the change protect debtholders over taxpayers? It reduces the ability of FHFA to place Fannie or Freddie into a receivership, under which FHFA could impose losses on creditors. Under Section 1145 of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, FHFA has the discretion of appointing a receiver if one the GSEs displays an “inability to meet obligations,” which would include dividend payments. By essentially taking away that lever from FHFA, Treasury has greatly reduced any chance of a receivership. Sadly, I believe a receivership was the only thing that would force Congress to also deal with Fannie and Freddie. Treasury’s actions have been a massive win for the broken status quo.

Don’t let the rest of the Treasury announcement fool you. Yes, Treasury has both agreed to reduce the GSEs’ portfolios and to require the GSEs to submit an “annual taxpayer protection plan,” but both of these efforts are little more than fig-leafs to cover Treasury’s protection of GSE creditors at the expense of taxpayers. After all, the first commandment in the Geithner bible, as witnessed during the 2008 bailouts, is that debtholders shall take no losses, regardless of the expense to the taxpayer.

Some folks say they want “austerity,” but that’s largely a code word for higher taxes. They’re fighting against the people who say they want “growth,” but that’s generally a code word for more Keynesian spending.

And then, to get me even more irritated, lots of people support bailouts because they supposedly are needed to save the euro currency.

When I ask these people why a default in, say, Greece threatens the euro, they look at me as if it’s the year 1491 and I’ve declared the earth isn’t flat.

So I’m delighted that the Wall Street Journal has published some wise observations by a leading French economist (an intellectual heir to Bastiat!), who shares my disdain for the current discussion. Here are some excerpts from Prof. Salin’s column, starting with his common-sense hypothesis.

…there is no “euro crisis.” The single currency doesn’t have to be “saved” or else explode. The present crisis is not a European monetary problem at all, but rather a debt problem in some countries—Greece, Spain and some others—that happen to be members of the euro zone. Specifically, these are public-debt problems, stemming from bad budget management by their governments. But there is no logical link between these countries’ fiscal situations and the functioning of the euro system.

Salin then looks at how the artificial link was created between the euro currency and the fiscal crisis, and he makes a very good analogy (and I think it’s good because I’ve made the same point) to a potential state-level bankruptcy in America.

The public-debt problem becomes a euro problem only insofar as governments arbitrarily decide that there must be some “European solidarity” inside the euro zone. But how does mutual participation in the same currency logically imply that spendthrift governments should get help from the others? When a state in the U.S. has a debt problem, one never hears that there is a “dollar crisis.” There is simply a problem of budget management in that state.

Because European politicians have decided to create an artificial link between national budget problems and the functioning of the euro system, they have now effectively created a “euro crisis.” To help out badly managed governments, the European Central Bank is now buying public bonds issued by these governments or supplying liquidity to support their failing banks. In so doing, the ECB is violating its own principles and introducing harmful distortions.

Last but not least, Salin warns that politicians are using the crisis as an excuse for more bad policy - sort of the European version of Mitchell’s Law, with one bad policy (excessive spending) being the precursor of an additional bad policy (centralization).

Politicians now argue that “saving the euro” will require not only propping up Europe’s irresponsible governments, but also centralizing decision-making. This is now the dominant opinion of politicians in Europe, France in particular. There are a few reasons why politicians in Paris might take that view. They might see themselves being in a similar situation as Greece in the near future, so all the schemes to “save the euro” could also be helpful to them shortly. They might also be looking to shift public attention away from France’s internal problems and toward the rest of Europe instead. It’s easier to complain about what one’s neighbors are doing than to tackle problems at home. France needs drastic tax cuts and far-reaching deregulation and labor-market liberalization. Much simpler to get the media worked up about the next “euro crisis” meeting with Angela Merkel.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) advise the states to get their fiscal houses in order instead of holding out hope for a bailout from federal taxpayers. That’s sound advice. However, the states already effectively get bailed out by federal taxpayers each and every year.

The first chart shows that the federal government has accounted for over a third of total state spending in recent years. The increase can be attributed to federal “stimulus” spending. The federal government’s share will retreat as the economy (hopefully) continues to strengthen and federal policymakers limit spending increases in the face of mounting debt. However, getting the federal government’s share of total state spending back to, say, 30 percent would be nothing to celebrate.

The post-stimulus decrease in Washington’s generosity to the states has state and local officials—and the special interests that ultimately benefit from the Beltway-to-State money laundering operation—concerned. Reporters typically relay these concerns to the public without adding any historical context. The following chart provides that context, and it indicates that the concern shouldn’t be that the states won’t be getting as much money; rather, the concern should be that the states have become dangerously reliant on federal money.

So here’s another suggestion for state and local officials. If you want to spend more money than Washington will give you, go out and tell your taxpayers that you want to increase their taxes to pay for it.

We now have another group of taxpayers who are fighting back against greedy government. My ancestors in Ireland have decided that enough is enough and there is widespread civil disobedience against a new property tax.

Ireland is facing a revolt over its new property tax. The government said less than half of the country’s 1.6 million households paid the charge by Saturday’s deadline to avoid penalties. And about 5,000 marched in protest against the annual conference of Prime Minister Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael party. Emotions ran raw as police backed by officers on horseback stopped demonstrators from entering the Dublin Convention Centre. …One man mistakenly identified as the government minister responsible for collecting the tax had to be rescued by police from an angry scrum. Kenny said his government had no choice, but to impose the new charge as part of the nation’s efforts to emerge from an international bailout. …The charge this year is a flat-fee €100 ($130) per dwelling, but is expected to rise dramatically next year once Ireland starts to vary the charge based on a property’s estimated value. Anti-tax campaigners have urged the public to ignore the tax demand, arguing that the government doesn’t have the power to collect it.

What makes this new tax so outrageous is that Irish taxpayers already have been victimized with higher income tax rates and a more onerous value-added tax. Yet they weren’t the ones to cause the nation’s fiscal crisis. Ireland is in trouble for two reasons, and both deal with the spending side of the fiscal equation.

2. Irish politicians decided to give a bailout not only to depositors of the nation’s failed banks, but also to bondholders. This is a grotesque transfer of wealth from ordinary people to those with higher incomes.

Heck, no wonder the Irish people are up in arms. They’re being asked to cough up more money to finance a bailout that was both corrupt and wasteful.

Let’s close by looking at American attitudes about tax evasion. Here’s part of a column from Forbes, which expresses surprise that Americans view tax evasion more favorably than behaviors such as shoplifting and littering.

A new survey suggests Americans consider cheating on their taxes more socially acceptable than shoplifting, drunk driving or even throwing trash out the window of a moving car. …only 66% of the participants said they “completely agree” that “everyone who cheats on their taxes should be held accountable” and only 72% completely agreed that “it’s every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes”–suggesting, as the Shelton study does, that perhaps disapproval of tax evasion is not as strong as, say, disapproval of stealing from private businesses.

I’m not sure, though, why anybody would be shocked by these results. We have a government in Washington that is pervasively corrupt, funneling money to scams like Solyndra.

These same people want higher tax rates, which will further encourage people to protect their income.

The same people who helped create the $180 billion bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now demanding the head of Ed DeMarco, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some commentators have gone as far to say that the “single largest obstacle to meaningful economic recovery is a man who most Americans have probably never heard of, Edward J. DeMarco.” Of course, such a statement shows a stunning lack of understanding of both the mortgage market and the economy in general.

Why are so many upset with Mr.DeMarco? One simple reason: he is following the law. Some believe that broadly writing down the mortgages of underwater borrowers would turn the economy around, regardless of the cost to the taxpayer. While that assumption itself is highly questionable, it doesn’t matter. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the current statutory language governing FHFA limits Mr. Demarco from doing so. Yes, some proponents have found language elsewhere in the statute they believe allows sticking it to the taxpayer for another $100 billion. But their argument relies on general introductory sections of the statute, not the powers and duties of FHFA as a conservator. Statutory interpretation 101 is that more specific sections trump general introductory sections. General sections have “no power to give what the text of the statute takes away” (Demore v. Kim, 538 U.S. 510, 535). One would expect senior members of Congress to understand that.

Of course, if some members of Congress believe we should spend $100 billion bailing out deadbeats, then why don’t they simply offer a bill on the floors of the House and Senate doing so? I’m sure House leadership would be happy to have a vote on the issue. The notion, instead, that an unelected, un-appointed, acting agency head should, in the absence of clear authority to do so, spend $100 billion is simply offensive to our system of government. Not to mention it probably violates the Anti-Deficiency Act, and would be hence subject to criminal prosecution.

Unfortunately, one of the common themes of the financial crisis was outright unlawful behavior by the financial regulators, such as the FDIC broad guarantee of bank debt, which lacked any statutory basis. Mr. DeMarco is to be commended for staying within the letter of the law. If Congress had wanted Fannie and Freddie to bailout underwater borrowers, they could have simply written that into the statute. Congress didn’t, regardless of whatever spin any current members of Congress might want to place on the issue.